Daniel Worley is a Michigan based award-winning composer, producer and performer. Working in a broad range of genres from rock to electroacoustic to contemporary orchestral music, Daniel is continually driven by the need to explore how sound, gesture, style, context and meaning intersect in all music.

Daniel recently completed FREAK SHOW, a concept album loosely based on the life of the ”Elephant Man,” John Merrick, and also the first rock album accepted as a doctoral dissertation in the United States. Musically FREAK SHOW fuses together electro-acoustic hallucinations, aggressive alt-rock rage, lush post-art rock drama and filters it through a contemporary harmonic and structural sensibility, creating a concept album of the highest order. Besides being the composer, lyricist and primary performer, Daniel also took control of all aspects of the record making process – recording, editing, mixing, mastering – treating those elements as integral parts of the composition process.

As a composer, Daniel has been commissioned by an eclectic mix of ensembles including: the Albany Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Dogs of Desire, the Ryoanji Duo, TONK, Derek Bermel and Timothy McAllister. He has received numerous awards, honors, and grants, including a 1999 SEAMUS/ASCAP Commission, two ASCAP Young Composer Grants, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship, and even a Tampa Bay Composers Forum Prize. His concert music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe and included in numerous festivals and conferences.

As a producer, Daniel’s interests and credits range from acoustic to alternative to jazz to contemporary music ensembles, from singer-songwriter Bruce Bielawa to avant-jazz saxophonist Andrew Bishop to the contemporary music ensembles Quorum and TONK.

Daniel is currently performing with Nameless (vocals, guitar) and The Chameleon Voice (bass, vocals), as well as finishing production on Bruce Bielawa’s 2nd album Something Else, working on a new, as yet untitled album infected by American roots music, and teaching Introduction to Electronic Music at the University of Michigan.